The street ahead of us curved and as we walked past the curve I spotted this:

and my body jumped a little. It was “kaonashi” or “noface” from Spirited Away. That moment was so surreal. Then I looked at the surroundings. The statue was placed in front of a very large ryokan hidden by its front wings and trees:

It did remind me a lot of the bathhouse in Spirited Away. Was there a connection? With some Internet searching later I found that several people had similar opinion and it is said that this is one of the ryokan that inspired Miyazaki.